Australian Police Shoot Teen,16, Armed with Knife after Stabbing Incident in Perth

A 16-year-old boy, armed with a knife, was shot dead by police after stabbing a man in a car park outside a hardware store in Willetton, Perth, on Saturday night.

Western Australian premier Roger Cook revealed to reporters on Sunday that the teenager had attacked a man and then charged at police officers before being shot.

Cook also mentioned that there were indications the boy had been radicalized online but emphasized that he appeared to have acted alone in this incident.

Western Australian premier Roger Cook said there were indications the boy had been radicalized (Australian Broadcasting Corporation via AP)

The victim, a man in his 30s, was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back and was rushed to a hospital in serious but stable condition, according to a police statement.

This incident follows a recent counterterrorism investigation in Sydney, where another 16-year-old boy was charged with a terrorist act after stabbing an Assyrian Orthodox bishop and priest in a church on April 15.

Six of his alleged associates have also been charged with the incident.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, briefed on the Perth stabbing by top law enforcement officials, assured that there was no ongoing threat to the community based on available information.

Police commissioner Col Blanch disclosed that the boy had been involved in a program for at-risk youth and that police had received an emergency call from the teenager expressing intent to commit acts of violence. The failure of tasers to subdue him led to the fatal shooting by police.

The boy was shot dead in the car park of a hardware store in Perth (Australian Broadcasting Corporation via AP.

Members of the local Muslim community had previously raised concerns about the boy’s behaviour to the police. The Imam of Perth’s Nasir Mosque condemned the stabbing, emphasizing that violence has no place in Islam.

The incident has reignited discussions around terrorism classification in Australia, with some Muslim leaders questioning why certain acts are labelled as terrorist acts while others, like a recent deadly mall rampage, are not.

Authorities are continuing their investigations into the motives behind these attacks and their connections to broader extremist ideologies.

The comparison between law enforcement responses to recent violent incidents has sparked criticism from some Muslim leaders in Australia. They have pointed out the disparity in labelling last month’s church stabbing as a terrorist act while not applying the same classification to a deadly rampage at a Sydney shopping mall just days earlier, where six people were killed and a dozen wounded.

In the mall attack, a 40-year-old assailant was shot dead by police, but authorities have yet to disclose his motive, leaving questions about the incident unanswered.

Australian authorities have categorized the church attack as only the third terrorist act since 2018, prompting discussions about the criteria and consistency in defining such acts.

Previous incidents, such as the tragic ambush near Wieambilla in December 2022, where three Christian fundamentalists killed two police officers and a bystander before being killed by police, highlight the complexity and severity of extremist violence in Australia.

Similarly, the 2018 stabbing in Melbourne by a Somalia-born Muslim underscores the varied nature of threats faced by law enforcement agencies and communities in the country.

Please get in touch with our news team via e-mail at info@M10news.com for further inquiries or updates regarding this ongoing crisis. For more news updates and stories, visit our news page

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Sola Adeniji

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